News Analysis: The future of Indonesia-China relations after 60 years

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the 13-member Delegation of the Beijing-based Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA) held two meetings in Jakarta themed “Indonesia-China after 60 Years of Diplomatic Relations”.

The two fora are the Public Seminar on Sept. 20, and the Bilateral Seminar on Sept. 21.

The Jakarta events were preceded by an earlier bilateral seminar held in Beijing in March hosted by the CPIFA and attended by a 20-member CSIS delegation. While the topics of this meeting touched on more general issues like strategic developments in East Asia, economic and political developments in Indonesia and China, and Indonesia-China relations, the Public Seminar in Jakarta discussed the regional architecture in East Asia, and the future of the Indonesia-China relations.

The Bilateral Seminar covered the topics of global governance, Indonesia-China business and cultural cooperation.

Many good ideas were expressed during the discussions in Jakarta, including on students and youth exchange programs, and the willingness of the China-ASEAN Business Council to assist Indonesian businesses (including SMEs) to invest in China and trade with Chinese companies.

Discussing East Asian regional architecture, both Indonesian and Chinese participants agreed that the expanding of the East Asian Summit from ASEAN+6 to ASEAN+8 to include the United States and Russia would be good for the region and should make it more effective and complimentary.

This ends overlapping between the functions of ASEAN+3 and the former EAS or ASEAN+6 (with the addition of Australia, India, and New Zealand as its members) as both were designed to cover similar issues on functional cooperation like economic cooperation.

It is now clearly defined that the enlarged EAS is a summit forum to deal with strategic issues, and traditional and non-traditional security issues, while the implementations should be left to the other regional institutions such as the APT, the ARF, which is the new Defense Ministers Meeting of APT countries.

Such a role for the new EAS is deemed necessary and long overdue.

The end of the overlapping between the APT and the EAS before its expansion should now put the functional cooperation in the purview of the APT alone, while remaining open to invite the other three members of ASEAN+6 if needed.

The APT has the record of 12 years working on functional/economic cooperation, and has done a good job in trade and financial cooperation matters. The other important topics discussed were the role of Chinese-Indonesians in Indonesia, which was generally recognized as positive as they were first and foremost Indonesian citizens.

Based on the experience of chairman Deng Xiaoping during his Southeast Asia tour in 1978, the China’s Nationalist Law (1979) recognized that only Overseas Chinese who were not nationals of the countries where they resided were considered Chinese citizens but were still required to abide by the local laws and regulations.

Dato’ Tahir, the chairperson of the Indonesian Chinese Entrepreneurs Community (PERMIT), said his organization’s vision and ideals were that its members should be first and foremost loyal to Indonesia and strive to support Indonesia’s developments. In addition, they should work for good relations between Indonesia and China.

Separately, Dr. Rizal Sukma, the executive director of CSIS, stated that since the resumption of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China in 1990, many constraints and impediments in the earlier period of the bilateral relations due to history, prejudice and misunderstanding had been overcome. Indonesia and China now had a new opportunity, he continued, to conduct good relations based on new premises both nationally and regionally.

The main question in many of the Indonesian participants’ minds about China is that it is a great power in our midst whose policies and their pronouncements can create worries. Many young Indonesian diplomats who were present at the Public Seminar stated this.

While the size of China itself is significant, China’s policies should also be well understood by its neighbors.

Most importantly, China should minimize resorting to aggressive and harsh language in their pronouncements. On the Indonesian side, however, there should also be some efforts to master the Chinese language and to follow developments in China.

Efforts to engage in regional institutions are very important for Indonesia and China because both can help build CBM, better cooperation and alleviate misunderstandings and prejudices. The seminars and dialogues that CSIS and CPIFA organized are part of our joint efforts to promote better understanding, and eventually to create trust.

On Sep. 21 the Indonesia-China bilateral seminar was concluded with a grand reception hosted by Ambassador Zhang Qiyue to celebrate China’s National Day and the 60th anniversary of Indonesia-China diplomatic relations. A concurrent event was held as part of the celebrations, which included the first ever joint exhibition of exquisite Chinese brush paintings and Balinese traditional paintings at the National Art Gallery from September 16-21.

The writer is the vice chairman of the board of trustees, CSIS foundation